IV
Ideas about language in Euripides’ Orestes
0. Introduction
Orestes is among the last plays that Euripides produced during his lifetime.1 Matthew
Wright has recently characterised the play as a “sequel”, not just in the obvious sense
to Aeschylus’ Oresteia, but also, in a more adventurous way, to the poet’s own Helen
of 412.2 While Wright’s suggestion that Orestes is to be read or viewed with the earlier drama in mind has its difficulties as well as its attractions,3 I would be happy to
see Orestes as a ‘sequel’ to Helen, if only in the sense that the 408 play (after an intervening production featuring Phoenician Women) once again puts problems related
to man’s use of language at centre stage.4 Indeed, Orestes addresses such problems on
a rather larger canvas than Helen, or arguably any other extant Euripidean play since
Hippolytus of 428, does; and – as I show in section 5 below – with a different result.
For while Helen makes much of its human characters’ understanding of the world in
which they are situated in terms of ‘names’ and ‘things’ (see ch. II), what Orestes
puts at stake right from the start is mankind’s use of speech tout court.
In this final chapter, I present a survey of the play’s handling of ideas about
language. Proceeding where we left off in the preceding chapter, I begin with a discussion of Orestes’ perspective on the idea of the ἀγών, focusing on Orestes’ exploits
in the formal ‘agon’ scene; and proceed with a reading of the play’s central event: the
1
Σ E. Or. 371 states that Or. was among the plays Euripides produced at the 408 Dionysia, and claims
that this was the poet’s last production ‘before he left Athens’; accordingly, one recent commentator
has discussed Or. under the heading “Abschied vom Athen” (Holzhausen, Euripides Politikos 200-4).
It may well be that Euripides’ migration to Macedonia (see test. 112-20 TrGF) was a biographical
fiction (so Lefkowitz, Lives 103; and, conclusively in my view, Scullion, ‘Silence of the Frogs’), but
we may still conclude from the scholiast’s testimony that the διδασκαλίαι recorded no further Euripidean submissions before the posthumous production of Ba. and IA.
2
Wright, ‘Euripidean Sequel’ passim, acknowledging that his line of approach is already suggested by
Willink on Or. p. xxviii-xxxi.
3
Thus, Wright makes insufficient allowance for the fact that he expects the 408 audience to approach
Or. from the perspective not just of Hel. (which is already something of a stretch: see next n.), but of a
particular reading of Hel. – viz., Wright’s own, briefly mentioned above (ch. II n.150). On the other
hand, the kind of intertextuality discerned by Wright in Or.’s allusions to Hel. – notably the window allusion of Or. 129 ἔστι δ’ ἡ πάλαι γυνή (referring back, via Ar. Thesmo. 850 τὴν καινὴν Ἑλένην
µιµήσοµαι, to E. Hel.: cf. above, ch. II.2.1.1) – offers a welcome new perspective on the issue of Or.’s
transgressions of tragedy’s generic rules and bounds: see esp. Wright, ‘Euripidean Sequel’ 33-4 and 46.
4
Although Wright makes much of the “closeness in time” of Or. and Hel., he has nothing to say about
the intervening production, which must have taken place between 411 and 409 (cf. n.101 below).
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meeting of the Argive Assembly reported in the Messenger Scene. From there on, I
take a broader view of the play, pointing out a number of themes that Euripides broached in earlier dramas and revisits here; and I conclude that Orestes resembles not just
Helen, but also – and perhaps more fundamentally – Phoenician Women, in depicting
a community that is dangerously divided over two contrary impulses: an exaggerated
confidence in the power of the spoken word on the one hand, and a marked hostility
to excessive speech on the other. Finally, by way of an epilogue, I shall try to situate
Orestes and Phoenician Women both in their historical context and in the context of
Euripides’ theatrical production.
1. Euripides’ καινὸ
καινὸς Ὀρέστης
For a proper understanding of the attitudes and preconceptions that are played out in
Orestes’ ‘agon’ scene and in the Messenger’s report of the Assembly-meeting, it is
helpful to determine the extent to which this play revises earlier versions of the matricide myth. Accordingly, I begin with a brief appraisal of Euripides’ distinctive characterisation of the play’s eponymous hero.
Orestes dramatises an otherwise unattested episode that comes between the
matricide (the subject of Aeschylus’ Choephori) and Orestes’ trial in Athens (the subject of Eumenides). The drama is situated in the uncertain situation immediately following upon the murder of Clytaemestra: the deranged Orestes and his caring sister
Electra are confined to the palace and its environs, waiting for the Argive Assembly
to decide whether they should be executed, and hoping to enlist the support of their
uncle Menelaus, recently arrived from Troy. The setting and action of Euripides’ play
create a space between Aeschylus’ two consecutive dramas, and the poet constantly
marks departures from his predecessor’s canonical version.5 This is especially apparent in the first half of the drama, where Orestes seeks to come to terms with the complicated ethical and religious consequences of the matricide. For one thing, unlike his
counterpart in Eumenides, Euripides’ Orestes has not yet deemed it necessary to ensure his purification in Delphi, prior to burying his mother and facing his trial;6 he has
5
Canonical: Aeschylus was the only tragedian whose plays continued to be produced after his death
(cf. Vit. Aesch. 12 with Dover on Ar. Ran. p.23); the indirect evidence for 5th-cent. revivals of his
Oresteia is collected by Newiger, ‘Elektra’ 427-30.
6
Orestes has lingered in Argos for six days after dispatching his mother (Or. 39-40); his not having
been cleansed does not prevent him from taking his mother’s obsequies into his own hands (402-6,
with the discussion of Kovacs, ‘Naive & Malign’ 282-3). By contrast, Delphi is where Orestes had to
go straightaway in A. Cho. 1059-60 (for the text cf. Garvie ad loc. [p. 348-9]; Eum. 282-3 has Orestes
cleansed of polution in Delphi, prior to his coming to Athens: see Sommerstein on Eum. 237 [p. 124-5,
and cf. Eum. 276-85, 443-52]); and Delphi is where he says he went, with the Erinyes in pursuit, in E.
IT (942-3: ἠλαυνόµεσθα φυγάδες ἔνθεν µοι πόδα | ἐς τὰς Ἀθήνας † δή γ’ † ἔπεµψε Λοξίας – ‘I was driven as a fugitive to the place whence Loxias ... sent me to Athens’. ἔνθεν µοι in 942 is obelised by
Diggle and Cropp, and various conjectures would have him gone straight to Athens instead, as he is di-
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143
no confidence in the support of Apollo;7 and, again unlike Aeschylus’ Orestes, he
freely blames the god, not only for his negligence of the matricides after the deed is
done, but also for ordering the ‘most unhallowed murder’ in the first place,8 at one
point going so far as to characterise the matricide as an act that ‘not even [his] father
would have foisted upon [him]’.9 Finally, where the Orestes of Eumenides defers the
ultimate judgement on his deed to Athena, his Euripidean counterpart roundly condemns himself.10 Such departures from Aeschylus make Orestes’ Orestes a typically
Euripidean hero: one who, like the poet’s Heracles or Pentheus, combines a rational
adherence to human values with the traits of a θεοµάχoς.
This distinctive profile emerges most strikingly, perhaps, when Orestes denies
the reality of the Erinyes, claiming – as Menelaus inquires after the ‘apparitions’
(φαντάσµατα) that plague him – to have ‘seen them in [his] imagination’, three maid-
rected to do by the Dioscuri at E. El. 1254-5; but at IT 972 Orestes claims that, after standing trial in
Athens, he re-visited Delphi (ἐς ἁγνὸν ἦλθον αὖ Φοίβου πέδον). Cropp ad loc. (p.232) suggests that the
hero means he revisited the place “where Apollo had ordered him to kill his mother”, but it would be
more economical to see αὖ in 972 as a reference to 942 as transmitted (though cruces should probably
be placed around µοι πόδα as well as around the obviously corrupt δή γ’ in 943).
7
When the Aeschylean Orestes briefly despairs of the divine support that he feels entitled to (ἄναξ
Ἄπολλον, οἶσθα µὲν τὸ µὴ ἀδικεῖν· | ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐπίσται, καὶ τὸ µὴ ἀµελεῖν µάθε [Eum. 85-6: ‘Lord Apollo,
you know how to be without injustice; but knowing that, you must also learn not to be negli-gent’]), he
is immediately and at length reassured by the god himself (for the now commonly accepted transposition of Eum. 85-7 to follow 63, see Sommerstein ad loc. [p. 93-4]).
8
E.g. Or. 285-7: Λοξίαι δὲ µέµφοµαι, | ὅστις µ’ ἐπάρας ἔργον ἀνοσιώτατον, | τοῖς µὲν λόγοις ηὔφρανε,
τοῖς δ’ ἔργοισιν οὔ ([Orestes:] ‘It is Loxias I blame, who provoked a most unhallowed deed, and accommodated me with words, but not in deeds’). Nor is Orestes the only one to do so: Electra, who in
her prologue speech permits herself only a praeteritio (Or. 28: Φοίβου δ’ ἀδικίαν µὲν τί δεῖ κατηγορεῖν; [‘Why should I charge Phoebus with injustice?’]), lets loose in the parodos: ἄδικος ἄδικα
τοτ’ ἄρ’ ἔλακεν ἔλακεν, ἀπό|φονον ὅτ’ ἐπὶ τρίποδι Θέµιδος ἄρ’ ἐδίκασε | φόνον ὁ Λοξίας ἐµᾶς µατέρος (Or. 163-5: ‘Wrong was Loxias, and wrong the command, when on the throne of Themis he ordered, he ordered the despicable murder of my mother!’).
9
Or. 288-91: οἶµαι δὲ πατέρα τὸν ἐµόν, εἰ κατ’ ὄµµατα | ἐξιστόρουν νιν µητέρ’ εἰ κτεῖναί µε χρή, |
πολλὰς γενείου τοῦδ’ ἂν ἐκεῖναι λιτὰς | µήποτε τεκούσης ἐς σφαγὰς ὦσαι ξίφος (‘I think that if I had
looked my father in the eye and asked him whether to kill my mother, he would have touched my chin
and begged me never to plunge my sword in her gore’).
10
Cf. Eum. 224: δίκας δὲ Παλλὰς τῶνδ’ ἐποπτεύσει θεά ([Apollo to the Erinyes:] ‘The goddess Pallas
shall see to the justice of these matters’); 468: σὺ δ’ εἰ δικαίως εἴτε µὴ κρῖνον δίκην ([Orestes to Athena:] ‘It is up to you to judge whether I did right or not’); and 609-13 (Orestes calls upon Apollo to testify ‘whether he killed her σὺν δίκηι’ or not). Conversely, as Orestes’ Menelaus enters upon the action
in search of the author of the ‘ἀνόσιος φόνος upon Tyndareus’ daughter’ (374), Orestes readily acknowledges his uncle’s description: ὅδ’ εἴµ’ Ὀρέστης... ὃν ἱστορεῖς (380: ‘I am that Orestes you are
looking for’); and a few lines further on, he repeats himself by claiming: ὅδ’ εἰµί, µητρὸς τῆς ταλαιπώρου φονεύς (392: ‘I am what I am: the killer of my lamentable mother’).
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ens who look like Night:11 an echo of an earlier scene, where Electra tried to convince
her brother that the Erinyes he thinks he is seeing are illusory.12 Now, the reality of
the Erinyes would not have been a matter of absolute certainty for every theatre-goer:
unlike the Eumenides / Σέµναι θεαί with whom they are merged at the end of Aeschylus’ Eumenides, these deities were known primarily from epic, receiving no cultic
observance in Attica or anywhere else that we know of; so even for an audience watching Eumenides, it must have been possible to think of the Erinyes as imaginary
phenomena given temporary flesh by the playwright, and so to minimise the visceral
horror that (as one famous anecdote has it) caused women in the audience to give
birth prematurely;13 and while in Euripides’ Electra, Castor claims to see the dread
goddesses, the Erinyes of his Iphigenia in Tauris appear to be imaginary, seen by
Orestes but not by the herdsmen who watch him have his spell of madness.14 Orestes,
however, is the only extant dramatisation of the matricide where the principal characters have express reservations about their reality.15 In one passage, Orestes hints at a
psychological interpretation of his affliction, when prior to mentioning his ‘imaginary’ Erinyes, he comes up with the following diagnosis:
Men.
... τίς σ’ ἀπόλλυσιν νόσος;
Or.
ἡ σύνεσις· ὅτι σύνοιδα δείν’ ἐργασµένος.
Men. πῶς φήις; σοφόν τοι τὸ σαφές, οὐ τὸ µὴ σαφές.
395
– ‘What malady is killing you?’
– ‘Understanding: that is, I
know that I have done a dreadful thing.’
– ‘What do you mean?
It is wise to be clear, not to be unclear.’
11
Or. 407-8: – φαντασµάτων δὲ τάδε νοσεῖς ποίων ὕπο; – ἔδοξ’ ἰδεῖν τρεῖς Νυκτὶ προσφερεῖς κόρας:
the slightly, but justifiably, over-translated rendition ‘I saw them in my imagination’ is Kovacs’s.
12
Or. 259: ὁρᾶις γὰρ οὐδὲν ὥν δοκεῖς σάφ’ εἰδέναι (‘You don’t actually see what you believe you re-
cognise’): cf. the discussion of Kovacs, ‘Naive & Malign’ 281-2.
13
For the cultic reality (or otherwise) of the Erinyes, cf. Brown, ‘Eumenides’ 264-5; Sommerstein on
Eum. p.10; Henrichs, ‘Anonymity & Polarity’ 37-8; Clinton, ‘New Lex Sacra’ 166-8; and SewellRutter, Guilt by Descent 80-2.
14
El. 1342: κύνας τάσδ(ε), with Denniston ad loc. (p. 211) and the discussion of Sewell-Rutter, Guilt
by Descent 102-3. IT 291-2: παρῆν δ’ ὁρᾶν | οὐ ταῦτα µορφῆς σχήµατα ([after reporting Orestes’ anguish:]‘Yet to our vision there were no such figures’). They are, of course, ‘real’ in Orestes’ report of
his Athenian trial (IT 961ff.), but the effect is still quite different from that of Eum. and E. El.: cf.
Cropp on IT 281-300 (p. 194: “[the] narrative allows [the Erinyes] to be understood equally as real or
as the product of Orestes’ guilt-racked imagination: they seem real enough in Orestes’ later account...
but that does not cancel the suggestion of their imaginariness here”).
15
In S. El., the Furies have no physical presence, and Clytaemestra observes that she ‘fears no Erinys’
(276); but this is not tantamount to saying that there are no Erinyes (Winnington-Ingram, Sophocles
231-46 argues that in this play, Electra herself assumes the role of avenging Fury; see ibid. 205-16 for a
survey of Sophoclean references to the Erinyes).
Chapter IV
145
The extensive scholarly literature on Or. 396 is primarily concerned with establishing
whether σύνεσις here already connotes, like the later coinage συνείδησις, ‘conscience’, or whether it refers to ‘self-knowledge’.16 However, the most striking aspect
of Orestes’ choice of words – and probably the thing that prompts Menelaus’ puzzled
response in 397 – is the fact that in later-5th-cent. diction, the word σύνεσις normally
carries only positive overtones.17 Euripides seems to be intentionally stretching his
vocabulary here: Thucydides, for one, uses σύνεσις preferentially to designate especially able political actors;18 and later in the play, the accolade is accorded to one of
the speakers in the Argive Assembly (Or. 921: see section 3 below), as well as by
Orestes to his sister,19 and – ironically – to a slave whom he has converted at knifepoint to his own point of view.20 Elsewhere, ‘σύνεσις’ is frequently associated with
the human accomplishments celebrated by 5th-cent. intellectuals,21 for instance in the
quasi-sophistic Kulturentstehungslehre proffered by the Theseus of Euripides’ Suppliant Women, who praises ‘the one who fashioned our modes of live for us, and was
16
‘Conscience’: e.g. Pohlenz, Griechische Tragödie 444-9; Tange, ‘Σύνεσις & φιλία’ 60-9. ‘Self-
knowledge’: e.g. Fuqua, ‘World of Myth’ 14; Rodgers, ‘Expression of Conscience’ 250. Garzya, ‘Σύνεσις come mallattia’ 506 argues that σύνεσις could here have a medical/pathological sense (‘mental
derangement’), but cf. below n.17 and Assael, ‘Σύνεσις’ 50-1. The debate is summarised by Medda on
Or. p.18-21 (see esp. ibid. p. 19: “Euripide sembra puntare non tanto a sostituire il tradizionale tema
dello sconvoglimento mentale indotto dalle Erinni con una più moderna interpretazione della pazzia
come conseguenza del rimorso, quanto ad affiancare ad esso una nuova e più profonda dimensione cosciente della sofferenza, che rende problematico il rapportarsi di Oreste con se stesso e con chi gli sta
intorno”).
17
Cf. esp. Smith, ‘Disease’ 297, who points out that in the Hippocratic writings, σύνεσις is regularly
used as an antonym of ‘mania’ or ‘disease’; also Assael, ‘Σύνεσις’ 48.
18
Thuc. 6.39.1: ... βουλεῦσαι δ’ ἂν βέλτιστα τοὺς ξυνετούς, κρῖναι δ’ ἂν ἀκούσαντας ἄριστα τοὺς
πολλούς (‘the ξυνετοί are best at offering political counsel, the masses at listening and judging the best
course’); also e.g. 3.82.5 ἐπιβουλεύσας δέ τις τυχὼν ξυνετὸς καὶ ὑπονοήσας ἔτι δεινότερος (‘... a man
who is ξυνετός at counselling and even more δεινός in foresight’); 1.74.1 (of Themistocles); 8.68.4 (of
the leaders of the 411 coup). When, at 3.37.5, Thucydides’ anti-hero Cleon speaks disparagingly of ξυνέσεως ἀγῶνες ‘contests in cleverness’, the word’s normally positive overtones are clearly dominant.
19
Or. 1180: τὸ συνετόν γ’ οἶδα σῆι ψυχῆι παρόν (‘If there’s one thing I know, it is that you have τὸ
συνετόν in your mental make-up’).
20
Or. 1524: εὖ λέγεις· σώιζει σε σύνεσις (‘Now you’re talking: your σύνεσις is your salvation’).
21
E.g. [Hipp.] De Arte §1: τὸ µέν τι τῶν µὴ εὑρηµένων ἐξευρίσκειν ξυνέσιος ἐπιθυµία τε καὶ ἔργον
(‘To invent things that have not yet been invented, that is the desire and the business of σύνεσις’); Democr. fr. 181 συνέσει καὶ ἐπιστήµηι ὀρθοπραγέων τις ἀνδρεῖος ἅµα καὶ εὐθύγνωµος γίγνεται (‘He who
acts with σύνεσις and knowledge becomes at once manly and rightminded’); also Tro. 672 (τὸ θερῶδες
ἄφθογγόν τ’ ἔφυ | ξυνέσει τ’ ἄχρηστον [‘animals have no speech and do not use σύνεσις’]), Ar. Ran.
1482-3 (µακάριός γ’ ἀνὴρ, ἔχων | ξύνεσιν ἠκριβωµένην [Chorus: ‘blessed is the man who disposes of a
well-trained σύνεσις’]). Her. 655-6 (εἰ δὲ θεοῖς ἦν ξύνεσις | καὶ σοφία κατ’ ἄνδρας... ‘If only the gods
had a human share of understanding and wisdom...’) is pointedly ambivalent, cf. Bond ad loc. (p.233).
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the first to instill σύνεσις’;22 and this sophistic resonance of the word is clearly in
force in the passage from Aristophanes’ Frogs, already alluded to in the Introduction,
where ‘Euripides’ is made to say a prayer to a bizarre constellation of new-fangled
‘deities’:
Αἰθὴρ ἐµὸν βόσκηµα καὶ Γλώττης Στρόφιγξ
καὶ Ξύνεσι καὶ Μυκτῆρες ὀσφραντήριοι
(Ar. Ran. 892-3)
‘Aether my nourishment, and Tongue’s Hinge, and Ξύνεσις, and discerning Nostrils...’
By embracing ‘ἡ σύνεσις’ as the core notion that defines his present condition,23
Orestes can be seen to characterise himself by association (if not necessarily by implication) with such 5th-cent. ξυνετοί who pride themselves on their self-sufficience
rather than observe the gods’ dictates, and who would typically rely on their ‘tongue’
to assert their influence upon the world they live in.
In the passage cited above, the association between σύνεσις and speech – an
association made explicit in the Frogs prayer24 – and the general discursive context of
the ‘νόσος’ that is ‘killing’ Orestes, all recall the play’s programmatic opening lines,
in which Electra alludes to the divine punishment inflicted upon the matricides’
mythical ancestor Tantalus:
... καὶ τίνει ταύτην δίκην,
ὡς µὲν λέγουσιν, ὅτι θεοῖς ἄνθρωπος ὢν
κοινῆς τραπέζης ἀξίωµ’ ἔχων ἴσον,
ἀκόλαστον ἔσχε γλῶσσαν, αἰσχίστην νόσον.
(Or. 7-10)
‘He pays this penalty, so they say, because while, though human, he
enjoyed equal rank with the gods at their shared table, he had an unbridled tongue – a shameful disease.’
22
Suppl. 201-3: αἰνῶ δ’ ὃς ἡµῖν βίοτον... | ... διεσταθµήσατο, | πρῶτον µὲν ἐνθεὶς σύνεσιν. For the
terms in which Theseus is characterised in Suppl., cf. the literature cited at ch. III n.72 (and note that
ξύνεσις is ascribed to Theseus himself by Thuc. 2.15.2).
23
As Willink notes on Or. 386 (p. 151), “the article has almost the effect of giving ‘Awareness’ a capi-
tal letter”.
24
A personification of Tongue also features among the ‘deities’ called upon by ‘Socrates’ in Ar. Nub.
424. In the earlier play, Ξύνεσις is absent (Socrates prays to Ἀήρ and Αἰθήρ at Nub. 264; to Chaos,
Clouds and τὰν Γλῶτταν at Nub. 424; and to Breath, Chaos and Ἀήρ at Nub. 672), but in the popular
appreciation targeted by Aristophanes in 405, Ξύνεσις and Γλῶττα were apparently firmly associated
with one another, and it is not much of a stretch to assume that three years earlier, things were already
much the same.
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In other archaic and classical tellings of his tale, Tantalus is credited with a variety of
offences, varying from the testing of the gods’ omniscience by serving them human
flesh for dinner to distributing the gods’ nectar and ambrosia among mortals (Pi. Ol.
1.58ff.).25 Electra’s description less specifically subsumes these crimes into a general
characterisation, highlighting one particular aspect: Tantalus’ ἀκόλαστος γλώσσα. On
this inclusive interpretation of his faux pas, Tantalus can be seen as something like a
culture hero – someone, perhaps, like Prometheus, of whom, in the Aeschylean play
bearing his name, Hephaestus says:
τοιαῦτ’ ἐπηύρου τοῦ φιλανθρώπου τρόπου·
θεὸς θεῶν γὰρ οὐχ ὑποπτήσσων χόλον
βροτοῖσι τιµὰς ὤπασας πέρα δίκης.
(PB 28-30)
‘This punishment you earned for your kindness to the human race: a
god who would not bow to the gods’ anger, you gave privileges to
mankind beyond what was right’;
and who, in the same play, is credited with a ‘tongue’ that is ἄγαν ὑψήγορος (‘overly
haughty’) and µάταιος (‘unruly’).26 I am not suggesting, of course, that the opening
lines of Orestes allude in any sense of the word to the Aeschylean Prometheus plays;
rather, Euripides and the poet of PB can be seen to exploit a common pool of mythical
ideas and images in constructing a similar kind of figure to dominate their respective
dramatic creations – the figure of the ‘culture hero’, who goes against the will of the
gods to bestow upon mankind sundry gifts and benefits, and in doing so sets for them
an example of self-reliance and independence from the divine.27
2. Orestes ἀγωνιστή
γωνιστής
We shall return to Tantalus’ crime and its resonance throughout Euripides’ play in
section 4 below: for the moment, it will suffice to point out that Orestes’ opening
scenes present the audience with an Orestes who has a wholly different perspective
25
The poet of the Odyssey chose to leave it to his audience’s discretion to supply the reasons for the
punishment: cf. Heubeck on Od. 582-92 (p.112-3). Full references to the various accounts of Tantalus’
crime can be found in Rosscher s.v. ‘Tantalos’; cf. also O’Brien, ‘Tantalus’ 32-3. Willink, ‘Tantalos
Paradigm’ 32n.44 lists Hellenistic and Roman references to Tantalus’ garrula lingua, and argues that
they all go back to the “Euripidean locus classicus”.
26
PV 318-9: τοιαῦτα µέντοι τῆς ἄγαν ὑψηγόρου | γλώσσης, Προµεθεῦ, τἀπίχειρα γίγνεται (‘That is
what comes, Prometheus, of having an overly haughty tongue’); and 328-9: ἢ οὐκ οἶσθ’... ὅτι | γλώσσηι
µαταίαι ζηµία προστρίβεται; (‘Or don’t you know that an unruly tongue incurs punishment?’).
27
Willink, ‘Tantalos Paradigm’ suggests that in the later 5th cent., ‘Tantalus’ was a popular appellation
applied to contemporary intellectuals, notably perhaps to the polymath (and alleged atheist) Prodicus,
and that this topical resonance may affect the audience’s understanding of the lines under discussion;
but the evidence that underpins this suggestion is tenuous: cf. West on Or. 1-3 (p. 180); O’Brien, ‘Tantalus’ 31-2; Egli, Zeitgenössische Strömungen 42-3.
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upon the murder of his mother and its religious/moral implications from that of his
Aeschylean counterpart. Euripides’ Orestes has no faith in his traditional divine supporter Apollo, and questions the justice of the matricide; he has not sought the required cleansing of his blood-guilt; he does not, when sane, recognise the Erinyes as
an external threat; and he is associated, in his general condition, with his culture-herocome-to-grief, proto-sophist ancestor Tantalus. It is with such a characterisation, established in a prologue and parodos dominated by Electra and in Orestes’ successive
encounters with his sister and his uncle, that the matricide eventually confronts his
grandfather Tyndareus, in the play’s formal ‘agon’ scene.
Unlike its counterpart in Phoenician Women, the ‘agon’ scene of Orestes begins on a decidedly inauspicious note. As we have seen (ch. III.5.1), the debate between Polynices and Eteocles is elaborately staged by its arbiter Iocasta, who does
her utmost to ensure a profitable exchange between the two ‘contestants’. Orestes’
‘agon’ scene, by contrast, proceeds under the negative scope of an official prohibition, referred to early on in the drama, for any person to shelter or speak with the matricides, pending their trial.28 Upon entering the stage, Tyndareus alludes to this prohibition, when he addresses Menelaus rather than his grandson:
Μενέλαε, προσφθέγγηι νιν ἀνόσιον κάρα;
(481)
‘Menelaus, are you talking to this godless person?’;
Subsequently, when Menelaus declares his allegiance to his nephew, Tyndareus berates him for ‘wanting to be above the law’ (487 τῶν νόµων πρότερον εἶναι θελεῖν);
and Menelaus pointedly replies that ‘the intelligent’ (οἱ σοφοί) regard acting upon
compulsion as ‘slavish’ (πᾶν τοὐξ ἀνάγκης δοῦλόν ἐστι 488), and decides that Tyndareus’ old age and temper exclude him from intelligent society (490 ...οὐ σοφόν).
Thus, even before Orestes and his grandfather have exchanged a word, there is already a division, not just over the issue at hand, but also over the merits of debating
this issue, Tyndareus insisting on the impropriety of even conversing with Orestes,
and Menelaus excluding the old man’s point of view from serious consideration.
One may be reminded, here, of a much earlier encounter involving Menelaus.
Andromache’s third formal ‘agon’ scene is a debate between a Menelaus, who is on
the point of engineering the death of Andromache, and an aged Peleus who has assumed temporary authority over the royal household in the absence of his grandson
Neoptolemus. The older man’s first and last impulse is to rely on physical violence
rather than on argument against his Spartan opponent;29 while, as in Orestes, the
28
The prohibition is first mentioned at Or. 46-8 (ἔδοξε δ’ Ἄργει τῶιδε µήθ’ ἡµᾶς στέγαις | µὴ πυρὶ
δέχεσθαι, µηδὲ προσφωνεῖν τινα | µητροκτονοῦντας – ‘Argos here decrees that no one may harbour us
under their roofs or at their hearths, nor may any one address the matricides’); it is referred to at several
points in the subsequent drama – cf. below, section 4.
29
Note e.g. Andr. 588 σκήπτρωι δὲ τῶιδε σὸν καθαιµάξω κάρα; ([before the debate is even started:]
‘Shall I bloody your head with my σκῆπτρον?’); Peleus’s insistence on the Spartan Menelaus’ physical
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younger man questions his aged interlocutor’s σοφία and concomitant right to speak,
and dismisses his words as a manifestation of γλωσσαλγία.30 Whereas the likelihood
that Orestes’ audience would relate these two scenes is particularly small – not only
are the plays about 15 years apart, but we also happen to know that Andromache was
never staged in Athens – the approximate correspondence between them is still instructive, as it shows the poet’s consistent interest in exploring how such categories as
age (and, in Andromache, ethnicity) are deployed in the negotiation of discursive
power. Both the earlier and the later play juxtapose older men who reject deliberation,
with younger men that decide who is ‘σοφός’ and who isn’t.
We may recall from the preceding chapter that in the ‘agon’ scene of Phoenician Women, one of the ἀγωνισταί, Polynices, breaks down this opposition between
σοφοί and ἄσοφοι by claiming that what he has to say is ‘just, καὶ σοφοῖς καὶ τοῖσι
φαυλοῖς’.31 In Orestes, the aged Tyndareus does the same by observing that ‘being
σοφός or not’ is hardly the issue here:
† πρὸς τόνδ’ ἀγών τις σοφίας ἥκει πέρι †
εἰ τὰ καλὰ πᾶσι φανερὰ καὶ τὰ µὴ καλά,
τούτου τίς ἀνδρῶν ἐγένετ’ ἀσυνετώτερον;
(491-3)
‘[Are we going to have an ἀγών concerning σοφία about this man?]32
Given that what is good and what is not good are manifest to everyone, what man has proved himself to be less συνετός than he?’
Like Polynices in Phoenician Women – and, we may add, like the Theban Herald in
the much earlier Suppliant Women, who claimed that ‘even if there are two λόγοι’
about a given issue, ‘everyone knows which one is best, and what is good and what is
bad’33 – the Tyndareus of Euripides’ Orestes invokes a universal standard of morality,
cowardice; and, once the debate is concluded, his rather pathetic assertions of his own ability (Andr.
764-5: πολλῶν νέων γὰρ κἂν γέρων εὔψυχος ἢ κρεῖσσων). For the prominence of anti-Spartan sentiment in Andr., see my brief discussion at ch. III.1.1 (esp. n.12).
30
Questioning: Andr. 645-6 τί δῆτ’ ἂν εἴποις τοὺς γέροντας, ὡς σοφοί, | καὶ τοὺς φρονεῖν δοκοῦντας
Ἕλλησιν; (‘Why ever is it that the Greeks think that the aged, being thought of as ‘σοφοί’, are also the
ones who have sense?’). Γλωσσαλγία: Andr. 689; the same word, otherwise absent from classicalperiod diction, occurs in a similar context as Jason denigrates Medea’s contribution to the ‘agon’ scene
of Med. (525: τὴν σὴν στόµαργον, ὦ γύναι, γλωσσαλγίαν, aptly rendered by Mastronarde ad loc. [p.
259] as ‘uncontrolled incessant tongue-blather’).
31
Pho. 495-6, discussed above, ch. III.5.1.
32
The transmitted text of Or. 491 is defective both in metre and in sense, with the MSS diverging on
various details, and various restorations having been proposed (see Willink ad loc. [p. 167] and Holzhausen, Euripides Politikos 49n.89). With Porson and others, I feel that a skeptical question to precede
the one in 492-3 would be in place (see Diggle’s apparatus; otherwise Fraenkel ap. Di Benedetto ad
loc.), and translate accordingly; but the Greek text remains elusive.
33
Suppl. 486-7, as discussed above, ch.III.3.3.
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so as to do away with the necessity (or even desirability) of deliberating about the issue at all. The subsequent lines have Tyndareus – unlike Polynices or the Theban
Herald, but like Thucydides’ Cleon – invoking ‘the common law of the Greeks’ as the
yardstick against which Orestes’ crime is to be measured; and halfway through his
speech, the old man claims that he ‘will stand up for ὁ νόµος with all his power’.34
Scholars have been sharply divided over the question whether or not Tyndareus has a point, when he acknowledges, on the one hand, that Clytaemestra’s murder of Agamemnon was an αἴσχιστον ἔργον (498) and her own death a just desert
(ἔνδικα 538), while suggesting on the other that Orestes would have done better to
‘charge’ his mother with the murder ‘by prosecuting her according to the requisite
procedure’ and expel her from his house.35 But while we cannot be sure how to take
the old man’s vision of what Orestes ought to have done (and may surmise that, for a
contemporary audience, this matter was similarly ambivalent), no such uncertainty
pertains to Tyndareus’ reluctance to consider accounts of the matricide that compete
with his own: more than anything, it is this reluctance that sets him at loggerheads
with his nephew, who – as we have already seen – is quite ready to admit that he has
committed a ‘crime’. The first thing that Tyndareus has done after emerging on the
stage is enforce the official ban on addressing Orestes; and when his grandson has had
the temerity to speak up nonetheless, he is reproached for ‘brazening it out rather than
curbing his speech’ (ἐπεὶ θρασύνηι κοὐκ ὑποστέλληι λόγωι... Or. 606): an offence
that makes Tyndareus all the more determined to pursue the death sentence (607-14).
Faced with so much hostility, Orestes nevertheless attempts to build up a
competing case; and just as Tyndareus is outspoken about his discursive position, so
Orestes plainly states what he thinks he is doing. Acknowledging his nervousness
about speaking out (544 ἐγώ τοι πρὸς σὲ δειµαίνω λέγειν), he proceeds rightaway – if
the transmitted ordo versuum is sound – with the programmatic observation that he is
‘ἀνόσιος for having killed [his] mother, but ὅσιος by a different ὄνοµα, as his father’s
34
Or. 494-5: ὁστις τὸ µὲν δίκαιον οὐκ ἐσκέψατο | οὐδ’ ἦλθεν ἐπὶ τὸν κοινὸν Ἑλληνων νόµον (‘He did
not observe the right procedure and consult the common law of the Greeks’); and Or. 523: ἀµυνῶ δ’
ὅσονπερ δυνατός εἰµι τῶι νόµωι. For the Thucydidean Cleon’s appeals to νόµος, see my discussion at
ch. III.2.
35
Or. 500-2: χρῆν αὐτὸν ἐπιθεῖναι µὲν αἵµατος δίκην | ὁσίαν διώκοντ’, ἐκβαλεῖν τε δωµάτων | µητέρα
– acting in this way, Orestes would have ‘stuck to the law and been εὐσεβής’ (503). Burnett, Catastrophe Reversed 206 describes Tyndareus as “a sensible old aristocrat, the Argive equivalent of a good
Athenian dicast”; cf. e.g. Blaiklock, Male Characters 184-5; Conacher, Euripidean Drama 219; and
most forcefully Holzhausen, Euripides Politikos 49-65, who demonstrates that Tyndareus’ appeals to ὁ
νόµος are consistent with 6th- (if not with 5th-) cent. Athenian homicide legislation, and argues that
accordingly, Tyndareus’ case must be considered as sound. Against this interpretation, cf. e.g. Erbse,
‘Zum Orest’ 441-2; Zeitlin, ‘Closet of Masks’ 65; Eucken, ‘Rechtsproblem’ 158-9; O’Brien, ‘Character’ 196-7; and Porter, Studies passim (e.g. 111, 162), who all regard Tyndareus as bending legal discourse to his own factious purposes.
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avenger’.36 This couplet has been much moved about by Euripides’ modern editors,
who feel that it disturbs the integrity of Orestes’ captatio benevolentiae;37 but to do so
may well be precisely the point of these striking lines. The point that Orestes makes
can be seen as a complement to the reply that Phoenician Women’s Eteocles gave to
his brother Polynices: for Eteocles, contiguous values like καλόν and σοφόν need not
share more with one another than the ὁµοιότης or the ἰσότης of the ‘names’ that we
use for them – while ‘in fact’, they can be regarded in isolation from one another;38
for Orestes, conversely, patently antonymous terms may be regarded as ὀνόµατα for
one and the same ἔργον or πρᾶγµα, regarded under different aspects. Just like Eteocles’ analytical argument is set to collide head-on with Polynices’ adherence to a
monolithical conception of ‘justice’ – to the effect of reducing the ἀγών in which the
brothers are engaging to a futile exercise – so Orestes’ implications that the assignation of the predicates ὅσιος and ἀνόσιος is a mere matter of choosing the correct
‘name’ makes for a major collision with Tyndareus’ stated conviction that ‘what is
good and what is not good is manifest to everybody’.
As Orestes proceeds by asking his grandfather to do what the latter is particularly ill disposed to do – viz., to ‘put one set of considerations against another’ (δύο
γὰρ ἀντίθες δυοῖν, 551) – it becomes ever clearer that the debate in Orestes is as much
about the feasibility of debating, as it is about the issue at hand. The two contestants
basically agree about most points: Tyndareus acknowledges that Clytaemestra deserved to die, and Orestes acknowledges (in a remarkable departure from the Aeschylean account) that killing Clytaemestra was a crime that made him ἀνόσιος. But as
the ἀγών inevitably breaks down, and the contestants go their separate ways, they
continue to differ over the question whether the matricides’ fate is yet negotiable.
3. What happened in the Argive Assembly
In the preceding chapter I have distinguished provisionally between those tragic
ἀγῶνες that are situated so that they can make a difference to the course of the dramatic action, and those in e.g. Alcestis, Medea and Hippolytus that don’t; and we have
seen that, within the former category, there are the ἀγῶνες in e.g. Children of Heracles and Hecabe, which succeed in making a difference, and those in e.g. Suppliant
Women, Trojan Women and Phoenician Women that, in spite of more or less auspi-
36
Or. 546-7: ἐγὼ δ’ ἀνόσιός εἰµι µητέρα κτανών, | ὅσιος δέ γ’ ἕτερον ὅνοµα, τιµωρῶν πατρί. Willink
ad loc. (p. 174) and Kovacs accept Hermann’s ἐγῶιδ’ for the transmitted ἐγὼ δ’, which would make
Orestes’ claim all the more bold.
37
Hartung and Kirchhoff put them after 550 (so also West), Diggle after 556 (which he deletes, along
with 554-5).
38
Pho.501-2: νῦν δ’ οὔθ’ ὅµοιον οὐδὲν οὔτ’ ἴσον βροτοῖς | πλὴν ὀνοµάσαι· τὸ δ’ ἔργον οὔκ ἐστιν τόδε:
see my discussion at ch. III.5.2.
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cious beginnings, fail to do so.39 Orestes’ ἀγὼν λόγων between Tyndareus and Orestes clearly belongs with the latter (sub-)category – the category that most acutely
raises the question, ‘What went wrong?’. What went wrong, in this case, is that, just
as in Phoenician Women’s ‘agon’ scene, the two contestants enter the ἀγών on fundamentally incompatible premises: the one introducing into the procedure a degree of
relativism that is unacceptable to his interlocutor, the other adhering to a monolithical
conception of right and wrong that is bound to be rejected.
Once the ἀγὼν λόγων of Phoenician Women has come to an inconclusive end,
physical violence is set to ensue: ‘this contest is no longer one of words’, concludes a
wry Eteocles.40 In Orestes, by contrast, there is one more step to be taken before it all
ends in mayhem: as Electra announced in her prologue speech (and Tyndareus reminded us), there is yet to take place a meeting of the Argive Assembly.41 So far, the
focus of the play has mostly been on Orestes, who faces his troubles (as we have seen
in section 1 above) without relying on the certainties that offer comfort and succour to
his Aeschylean counterpart, and who freely exercises that faculty that he shares with
his mythical ancestor Tantalus: his γλῶσσα. After his failure to win Tyndareus and
Menelaus over to his cause, the Assembly offers him a final opportunity to negotiate
his own and his sister’s impunity.42 This event can thus be seen to take the place of
the Athenian trial-scene in Aeschylus’ Eumenides; and as with other aspects of the
drama, Euripides pointedly departs from the Aeschylean version.
After what has gone before, it comes as no surprise that there is no divine intervention in Orestes’ Argive trial: there are no Erinyes to prosecute him, nor is there
an Apollo to speak in his defence; and there is no Athena to resolve a tie by casting
the decisive vote – there are only Orestes’ Argive fellow-citizens, some of whom are
on his side, others against him. Doing without the strong divine presence of the Aeschylean version, Euripides focuses on the trial’s human dynamics. The first contributor to the debate is Talthybius, the herald known from the Iliad and numerous tragic
dramas, whose speech is non-committal (ἔλεξε... | διχόµυθα), the speaker being too
eager to please his peers to make a decisive case for or against (887-97); and he is followed by the Iliadic hero Diomedes, who speaks out against the death sentence and in
favour of exile (898-900). Then comes a pair of anonymi: the first, a man who has ‘no
check upon his tongue’ (ἀνήρ τις ἀθυρόγλωσσος) and is ‘forcefully audacious’ (ἰσχύων θράσει, 903), ‘reliant on the crowd’s cheering and on an uninformed freedom of
39
Cf, above, ch. III.1.1 and III.6. As I have noted in the latter place, other Euripidean ‘agon’ scenes
may be added to this categorisation: my argument does not require a complete conspectus.
40
Or. 588: οὐ λόγων ἔθ’ ἅγων, as discussed above, ch. III.5.3 with n.167.
41
Electra: Or. 48-50 κυρία δ’ ἥδ’ ἡµέρα | ἐν ἧι διοίσει ψῆφον Ἀργείων πόλις | εἰ χρὴ θανεῖν (‘This is
the appointed day on which the Argives’ city will decide by vote whether we must die’). Tyndareus:
Or. 612-4 µολὼν γὰρ εἰς ἔκκλητον Ἀργείων ὄχλον | ἑκοῦσαν οὐκ ἄκουσαν ἐπισείσω πόλιν | σοὶ σῆι τ’
ἀδελφῆι (‘I shall go the Argive Assemby and incite the city to attack you and your sister at their will’).
42
Orestes comes to his decision to attend the Assembly meeting in conversation with Pylades at Or.
775-87.
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speech’,43 in succesfully arguing for the death penalty; the second a ‘brave man’
(ἀνδρεῖος ἀνήρ, 917), who argues that the matricides be acquitted and, indeed, rewarded for their deed.
Where Aeschylus uses the trial to juxtapose prominently and carefully the different arguments pro and contra the matricide, the younger tragedian confines himself
to a schematic report of what was said, construing standard contrasts between between one man’s ἀνδρεία and the other’s θρασύτης,44 and between allegedly ‘free’
and ‘unfree’ speakers: while the indecisive Talthybius is a professional herald and, as
such, only too likely to be currying favour with the supporters of Aegisthus (889; 8945), and the bold, victorious advocate of the death sentence is allegedly suborned by
Tyndareus,45 ‘lord’ Diomedes speaks on his own behalf, and of the final speaker it is
said that he is an αὐτουργός (920).46 Moreover, it is notable that the apologia delivered by Orestes himself – the only contribution that is, purportedly, quoted verbatim
(931-42) – is confined to the briefest and bluntest statement of the claim that the matricide is a boon to the city as well as to the dead Agamemnon:47 an acceptable line of
defence,48 but one that falls short of the complexity and subtlety of Orestes’ own conception of his crime, as displayed in the preceding episodes.
Whereas, then, the Aeschylean trial presents an idealised instance of Athenianstyle judicial procedure (though not necssarily one that is unproblematical by itself),
Euripides prefers to confront his audience with the gritty dynamics of everyday poli-
43
Or. 905: θορύβωι τε πίσυνος κἀµαθεῖ παρρησίαι. Willink, Diggle and Kovacs delete a large portion
of the text here (904-13): I would prefer to retain (with West) 904-5, but otherwise agree that the extended description of the ἀθυρόγλωσσος becomes less and less reconcilable with the general direction
of the reporter’s thoughts.
44
θρασύτης: cf. IT 275 τις µάταιος, ἀνοµίαι θρασύς ([of the victorious speaker in a debate:] ‘someone
senseless and bold in his disregard of the laws’). For the contrast, cf. most conveniently Pl. Lach. 197b:
ταῦτ’ οὖν ἃ σὺ καλεῖς ἀνδρεῖα καὶ οἱ πόλλοι, ἐγὼ θρασέα καλῶ (‘That which you and the many call
courageous, that I would call bold’); Prot. 349b-51b &c.; and for a discussion of ‘civic’ ἀνδρεία in 4thcent. oratory, cf. e.g. Roisman, ‘Rhetoric of Courage’ 136-41.
45
Or. 915: ὑπὸ δ’ ἔτεινε Τυνδάρεως λόγους (‘It was Tyndareus that had provided the arguments’).
46
Oakly, ‘Orestes 895-7’ argues that, given that Talthybius is clearly off duty, a reference to his Ho-
meric profession would be out of place, and accordingly deletes the generic criticism of κήρυκες in Or.
895-7. This is not felicitous: the poet presents his speaker as a representative of a servile class, contrasting both with ∆ιοµήδης ἄναξ (898) and the αὐτουργός.
47
On Orestes’ view, the matricide benefits the city by demonstrating that it is not ὅσιος for women to
kill their menfolk (935-6). Wecklein’s deletion of Or. 938-42 (which restate the same thought more
elaborately) is accepted by Diggle and Kovacs; Willink on Or. 932-42 (p.236-7) deletes the entire oratio recta report of Orestes’ contribution, so that “we no longer have to wonder at the sheer inadequacy
of Orestes’ apologia at his trial”: but to wonder about that inadequacy may be precisely what the poet
wants us to do.
48
For a similar line of defence, see e.g. Lys. 1.47-50, where the speaker argues that killing the µοῖχος
of his wife was practically a civic duty, rather than a crime.
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tics, in which the speakers’ covert allegiances, and the impression they make upon οἱ
πολλοί, appear to matter at least as much as the strength of their arguments.49 A further difference between Orestes’ respective trials is the obvious fact that while the one
in Eumenides is presented in dramatic form, Orestes’ trial scene is narrated by an Old
Man, a former servant of Agamemnon’s, who happened to attend this particular session of the Assembly, and comes to report its outcome to his dead master’s daughter.
Depriving the audience of the chance to form their own opinion about what happened,
this mode of presentation substitutes the account of an outsider – a rustic, fiercely
loyal to Orestes’ cause, who appears not to be a regular attender of Assembly debates:50 it is solely on the authority of this reporter that the spectators are given to understand that the trial is a failure. The only ‘decent’ speaker – a man, much like the
Messenger himself, ‘who rarely has anything to do with the city and the ἀγορά’ (919),
‘of the sort who alone keep the land from destruction’ (οἵπερ καὶ µόνοι σῶιζουσι γῆν,
920) – fails to carry the day; while the ἀθυρόγλωσσος who argued for the death sentence, ‘that base man’, was victorious in the counting of hands (νικᾶι δ’ ἐκεῖνος ὁ
κακὸς ἐν πλήθει χερῶν, 944).
What are we to make of this emphatic focalisation? Are we to accept on the
Old Man’s words that Orestes and Electra are unfairly or unjustly condemned? Not
necessarily: no one would argue that Euripidean Messengers are as authoritative in the
expression of their opinions as they must be thought to be reliable in their relaying of
the facts.51 The point of the Messenger Speech is not to tell the spectators that the Assembly made the wrong decision, but to show them that this decision was attained in
the slapdash way they know so well from their own attendance of Assembly meetings,
rather than in the august fashion of Eumenides’s Areopagus trial; and to convey this
message, the cranky Old Man is the ideal medium. Like its Aeschylean counterpart,
the Argive Assembly-meeting should have been the locus where an authoritative resolution of the fraught issue of the Argive matricide was attained; but what the audience
49
Many scholars have seen a more or less straightforward relationship between what happens in the
Argive Assembly and what was going on in Athens’ deliberative institutions at the time of the production: most outspokenly, Di Benedetto assumes that the whole scene articulates the poet’s disillusionment with the functioning of the Athenian deliberative institutions (on Or. 852-956 [p. 171]); and
Willink diagnoses “a polarization of extremist views analogous to that which was currently militating
against politics of the centre” (on Or. 844-956 [p. 224-5]). Among the five participants in the Argive
debate, various topical allusions have been detected: Talthybius might recall Theramenes (cf. e.g. Hall
‘Cosmic Turbulence’ 268), and ancient scholarship already equated the ἀθυρόγλωσσος with Cleophon
(Σ Or. 910; cf. Romilly, ‘Assemblée du peuple’ 248). See also n.103 below.
50
Or. 866-7: ἐτύγχανον µὲν ἀγρόθεν πυλῶν ἔσω | βαίνων... (‘I happened to be making my way from
the country to the citadel...’). The stock character of the ‘man who abstains from politics’ is familiar to
us from forensic oratory (see Lateiner, ‘Man’), as well as from the posthumous portrayal of Socrates by
Xenophon and Plato.
51
Cf. above, ch. III.4.1 (p. 118-20), where it is argued that the Chorus’s scathing presentation of the
Greek Army’s debate about the fate of Polyxena in Hec.’s parodos should not be taken at face value.
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155
take away from the report is that the institutionalised juxtaposition of contrary voices
has failed to result in a dramatically satisfying conclusion; and accordingly, the Assembly scene comes to function as the impetus for further violence, rather than as an
ending in itself.
4. Tantalus’ crime: hostility towards the spoken word in Orestes
In the preceding sections, I have focused on Orestes’ handling of the theme featured
in my third chapter: the idea of the ἀγών. I have tried to show that Euripides’ revisionist perspective on the matricide’s moral implications, and his distinctive characterisation of Orestes as one who must rely on his own wits and resources in facing his misfortunes, goes hand in hand with a sombre outlook on the feasibility of the ἀγὼν
λόγων: both the debate with Tyndareus and the Argive Assembly fail to deliver an answer to the play’s key question, ‘what should be done with the matricides?’. As far as
Orestes’ ‘agon’ scene is concerned, the reason for this failure lies – as it did in Phoenician Women’s ἀγών – in the collision of the two contestants’ incompatible discursive attitudes; and the Messenger Speech compounds this fatal disharmony by presenting the Assembly’s deliberation through the weary eyes of an Argive who has little sympathy to spare for the institution on which he is reporting. At this point, I propose to widen the scope of my examination, and show how the play’s depiction of a
community torn between reliance on, and distrust of the spoken word incorporates
some of the other themes that we encountered in this dissertation.
I have already commented on the official prohibition, mentioned early in the
play by Electra, for the matricides ‘to be sheltered or spoken to’. A similar prohibition
is issued by Sophocles’ Oedipus with regard to the as yet unidentified killer of
Laius;52 and in the Sophoclean play, this prohibition is the source of some poignant
irony, brought to the surface by the omniscient Tiresias, as the ban’s unwitting target
implicates himself ever deeper in his own misfortune, precisely by failing to isolate
himself from the addresses of others: if only the king had obeyed his own decree!53 At
Electra’s first mention of the similar prohibition in Orestes, commentator C.W.
Willink observes that while the ban “may have been obeyed hitherto, ... henceforth it
is almost completely ignored” (on Or. 47 [p. 90-1]); but, while this is factually correct, it misrepresents the prohibition’s dramatic function. Fleetingly opening up the
prospect of an Orestes play without any on-stage interaction between the matricides
and the other dramatis personae, it presently confounds this expectation by having
first Helen, then Menelaus and finally Tyndareus, consciously transgressing the ban,
52
S. OT 238:... µήτ’ ἐσδέχεσθαι µήτε προσφωνεῖν τινα...
53
Cf. most notably S. OT. 350-2: ἐννέπω σὲ τῶι κηρύγµατι | ὧιπερ προεῖπας ἐµµένειν, κἀφ’ ἡµέρας |
τῆς νῦν προσαυδᾶν µήτε τούσδε µήτ’ ἐµέ ([Tiresias to Oedipus:] ‘I say that you should abide by the
decree you issued earlier, and from this day converse neither with these folks nor with me’).
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and reflecting upon their reasons for doing so.54 As in Sophocles’ Oedipus, though in
a completely different way, Orestes’ prohibition ensures that every act of communication between the main characters and those who surround them can be seen as a
frail opportunity recovered upon an imposed total silence.
Thus begins a significant patterning of speech and silence, comparable to the
pattern identified by B.M.W. Knox as a key dramatic device in Euripides’ Hippolytus.55 This is well recognised by Francis Dunn, who interprets the speech vs silence
pattern in Orestes in the light of the play’s complex mingling of “tragic” and “comic”
features (Dunn, Tragedy’s End 163-7); but Dunn’s discussion can be complemented
with a number of passages where the drama is crucially informed by the need to check
the proliferation of speech, or, by contrast, to encourage it. The very opening lines of
the play – lines that reputedly prompted Socrates to stand up and call for a repeat during its performance in the 408 Dionysia – appear to incorporate in their complex and
perhaps not wholly recoverable thought a reflection on the limits of language, as Electra says:56
οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲν δεινὸν ὧδ’ εἰπεῖν ἔπος
οὐδὲ πάθος οὐδὲ ξυµφορὰ θεήλατος
ἧς οὐκ ἂν ἄραιτ’ ἄχος ἀνθρώπου φύσις.
(1-3)
2 ξυµφορὰ θεήλατος plerique: -ὰν θεήλατον v.l. et Σ
‘There is nothing that is so momentous that words can express, no
experience or god-send misfortune, whose burden human nature cannot bear.’
Even apart from the textual uncertainty,57 it is difficult to establish an unequivocal
translation of these lines, as Euripides appears to combine two distinct ‘οὐκ ἔστιν
54
Helen: Or. 72-6 προσφθέγµασιν γὰρ οὐ µιαίνοµαι σέθεν, | ἐς Φοῖβον ἀναφέρουσα τὴν ἁµαρτίαν
(‘<O yes, I am addressing you,> for I do not bring pollution upon me with my addresses, since I transfer the blame upon Phoebus’). Menelaus and Tyndareus: Or. 481 and 607 (both cited above, section 2).
Orestes’ acknowledgement that, when he goes to argue his case in the Assembly, ‘he will not be gladly
received’ (777 ... µὴ οὐ λάβωσί σ’ ἄσµενοι) constitutes one more allusion to the prohibition.
55
Ch. I.2.2 p. 36-7.
56
The Socrates anecdote is preserved at Cic. Tusc. 4.29.
57
The manuscripts are divided about the grammatical case of ξυµφορά(ν) – and thus, by implication,
about that of ἔπος and πάθος, some witnesses construing them as nominatives, others as accusatives
depending on εἰπεῖν: the tentative translation given above is based on the former option. Willink on Or.
1-3 (p. 78) opts for accusatives and translates: “no tongue can tell of a malady or god-imposed affliction too dire for the nature of man to shoulder” (but cf. on Or. 1-2 [p. 78-9], where a different rendition
is given). One of the alternatives offered by Σ is to take ὧδε εἰπεῖν ἔπος as an adverbial group (= ὡς or
ὥστε εἰπεῖν ἔπος [‘so to speak’]): although there are no parallells, this solution is defended by Holzhausen, ‘Textprobleme’ 271-3 and Kovacs, Euripidea tertia 73-6 (who translates: “there is virtually
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157
οὐδέν’-constructions: one that would negate x in absolute terms (‘there is no such
thing as x’),58 and one that introduces a comparative scale, here expressed by the correlative pronoun ὧδε.59 The resulting complex construction seems to conjoin the ideas
that there is nothing so δεινός that human nature cannot bear, and that some things are
too δεινός to be expressed in words.
A further complication pertains to the ambiguity of the adjective δεινός, which
can have the positive sense ‘wonderful’, as well as the negative sense ‘shocking’ or
‘dreadful’. Sophocles famously plays on this ambiguity in the first stasimon of his Antigone, where the Chorus claims that πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κοὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον
πέλει (‘Many are the world’s wonders, and none more wonderful than man’) and proceed to catalogue a number of admirable human endeavours and accomplishments –
only to conclude that all such endeavour is in vain if man does not heed human νόµος
and divine δίκη; and thus, retrospectively, to activate the complementary, negative
reading of the word δεινά as well.60 Orestes’ opening γνώµη seems to trace a similar
trajectory, with δεινὸν ὧδε in line 1 allowing (if not inviting) a positive interpretation,
that is subverted in the subsequent lines as Electra mentions πάθη and συµφοραί.
If, with all these complications, Euripides’ play can be seen to open on the
idea that some things are too ‘momentous’ to be expressed, then this thought is complemented by Electra’s subsequent account of the crime of Tantalus (already signalled
above in section 1):61 ignoring, as we have seen, the traditional identifications of Tan-
nothing horriffic, no suffering, no god-sent affliction, whose burden...”); but why would Electra hedge
her statement like this?
58
Cf. e.g. Hec. 956-7: οὐκ ἔστι πιστὸν οὐδέν, οὔτ’ ευδοξία | οὔτ’ αὖ κτλ. (‘There is nothing secure, not
a good reputation nor...’).
59
Cf. Or. 1155-6: οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲν κρεῖσσον ἢ φίλος σαφής, | οὐ πλοῦτος, οὐ τυραννίς (‘There is noth-
ing greater than a true friend, not riches nor power!’); also e.g. Andr. 986 (...κρεῖσσον...); Hel. 1618
(...χρηισµώτερον βροτοῖς...). For δεινὸν ὧδε = ὧδε δεινόν at Or. 1, cf. S. El. 1081: τίς ἂν εὔπατρις ὧδε
βλάστοι (‘Who could grow so high-born [sc. as she]?)’; Ba. 1036 (with the lacuna following ὧδε).
60
S. Ant. 332ff. Kamerbeek on Ant. 332 (p.82), for instance, observes that, while “awe-inspiring po-
werfulness is the concept that comes to mind when hearing the first strophic pair, [but] the limits of
man’s powerfulness are as it were included in the term”. As Garvie on A.Cho. 585-93 (p. 203-4) notes,
the Sophoclean stasimon reverses the thought of the the first stasimon of Choephori, which begins with
πολλὰ µὲν γᾶ τρέφει | δεινὰ δειµάτων ἄχη... (‘Many are the dreadful terrors bred by the earth’), and
proceeds as follows: ἀλλ’ ὑπέρτολµον ἀνδρὸς φρόνηµα τίς λέγοι; (‘... but who can adequately describe
man’s far-reaching ambition?’): here, the adjective δεινός initially assumes the negative sense, to which
the positive sense ‘awesome’ stands in suppressed counterpoint.
61
Tantalus is introduced as an exemplification of the opening γνώµη – presumably of the idea that
there is no end to mankind’s sufferings, implied in lines 2-3: ὁ γὰρ µακάριος, κοὐκ ὀνειδίζω τύχας, |
∆ιὸς πεφυκώς, ὡς λέγουσι, Τάνταλος | κουρυφῆς ὑπερτέλλοντα δειµαίνων πέτρον | ἀέρι ποτᾶται... (Or.
4-7: ‘Thus the prosperous – I do not mock his fate – Tantalus, Zeus’s son, it is said, hovers in mid-air,
in constant fear of a rock hanging over his head’). The ‘suspended rock’ is familiar from lyric (if not
from epic) accounts of Tantalus’ unfortunate career; but the idea of Tantalus flying in mid-air cannot
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talus’ faux pas, Electra ascribes to her ancestor the αἰσχίστη νόσος of having an
ἀκώλαστος γλῶσσα – the ‘shameful disease of having an unbridled tongue’.62 This
mythographical innovation strengthens, or so I have suggested, Tantalus’ status as a
‘culture hero’, an ambivalent figure familiar, e.g., from the Aeschylean Prometheus
plays and from the µῦθος ascribed to ‘Protagoras’ in Plato’s eponymous dialogue;63
and it makes Tantalus an emblematic figure, whose negative example resonates
throughout Orestes’ dramatic action, as its principal characters indulge their own
ἀκόλαστοι γλῶσσαι and/or experience their share of heaven-sent misfortune.64
Here, for instance, is how the Chorus introduce Menelaus upon his first appearance on stage:
δῆλος ὁρᾶσθαι τοῦ Τανταλιδῶν | ἐξ αἵµατος ὤν...
χαῖρ’ εὐτυχίαι δ’ αὐτὸς ὁµιλεῖς
θεόθεν πράξας ἅπερ ηὔχου.
(350-5)
‘Your looks mark you plainly as being from the blood of Tantalus’
sons... Hail to thee, who consorts with prosperity and has from the
gods all the success you prayed for!’
When the Chorus deliver these lines, they seem unaware of the fact that the Tantalus
connection is cause for worries rather than rejoice: unlike the audience, they were not
present when Electra delivered her prologue speech, and this makes for some considerable dramatic irony. At the other end of Orestes’ action, the worrisome implications
of Menelaus’ Tantalid inheritance are explicitly confirmed as, moments away from
Apollo’s concluding e machina intervention, he is made to say: πέπονθα δεινά, ‘I am
the victim of terrible πάθη’ (Or. 1616) – a resounding echo of the ‘δεινὸν πά-θος’ of
the play’s programmatic opening lines; and when in reply, Orestes observes that in
witholding his aid from the matricides, Menelaus called these πάθη upon himself
(σαυτὸν σύ γ’ ἔλαβες 1617), it transpires that, like his mythical ancestor, he has himself to blame.
Overt and covert references to the Tantalus exemplum thus conspire with the
sceptical, analytical attitude of Orestes his accomplices and his allies illustrated in
sections 1 and 2 above, and with the formal ban on communication with the matricides, to create a strong sense of the dangerousness of speaking up – of wielding your
γλῶσσα in order to get your way. This sense of danger is complemented throughout
be parallelled: cf. Rosivach, ‘Orestes 5-7’; Willink, ‘Tantalos Paradigm’ 32 and on Or. 7 (p. 81). The
idea that Euripides’ depiction – both here and at 982-6 – is indebted to Anaxagorean cosmology goes
back to antiquity: see Scodel, ‘Tantalus & Anaxagoras’; Egli, Zeitgenössische Strömungen 38-42 and
44-9.
62
Or. 10; the full text is cited and discussed above, in section 1.
63
For the Aeschylean Prometheus plays and Protagoras’ myth, cf. ch. I.1 above.
64
For general accounts of the Tantalid myth-cycle’s resonance in the play’s lyrics, cf. esp. O’Brien,
‘Tantalus’; Kyriakou, ‘Pelops’; and Egli, Zeitgenössische Strömungen 258-72.
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159
the play’s dramatic action by an insistence on the positive value of silence. Thus,
while the theme-words ‘πάθος’, ‘ξυµφορά’, and ‘νόσος’ resurface a number of
times,65 as does – as we have already seen in sections 1-3 – the notion of ‘unbridled’,
‘uncurbed’ or unchecked speech,66 what is most notable as Electra proceeds with her
prologue speech is, precisely, her reluctance to speak about the δεινὰ πάθη of her family. Having dispatched the Tantalus paradigm, Electra continues the genealogical account that naturally follows from it with Pelops and Thyestes, only to stop markedly
short of finishing the story of their conflict;67 and again, as she brings the narrative up
to Clytaemestra’s killing of Agamemnon, she interrupts herself to observe that the
story is not ‘fitting for a πάρθενος to relate in public’.68 On one level of interpretation,
Electra’s “insistent coyness” is a means of making the prologue’s exposition of the
facts “less mechanical” than it is in some other Euripidean plays;69 but narrative
economy is not the only relevant consideration: there is an ethopoetical aspect as well,
Electra initially abstaining from anything that resembles the ‘excessive’ speech for
which her ancestor incurred his divine punishment.70 In the subsequent parodos, Electra proceeds to caution the approaching Chorus to be as silent and demure as possible,
65
Note e.g. Or. 413-6: οὐ δεινὰ πάσχειν δεινὰ τοὺς εἰργασµένους; – ἀλλ’ ἔστιν ἡµῖν ἀναφορὰ τῆς συµ-
φορᾶς ... – µὴ θάνατον εἴπηις· τοῦτο µὲν γὰρ οὐ σοφόν ([Men.:] ‘Isn’t it δεινός what the perpetrators of
δεινός acts are made to suffer?’ [Or.:] ‘My recourse in misfortune is...’ [Men.:] ‘Don’t say “death”: that
wouldn’t be wise’) and Or. 447: ὦ µέλεος, ἥκεις συµφορᾶς ἐς τοὔσχατον ([Men.:] ‘Poor man, you have
reached the limit of misfortune’) and see Willink on Or. 2 (p. 79).
66
Notably at Or. 607 ... κοὐχ ὑποστέλληι λόγωι and Or. 903 ἀνήρ τις ἀθυρόγλωσσος. The former is a
bold constellation (a sea-faring metaphor, replacing the equestrian imagery of Or. 10: cf. Willink ad
loc. [p. 183]), the latter a commonplace (cf. Simon. fr. 541.2 ἄθυρον στόµα, Theogn. 421 πολλοῖς ἀνθρώπων γλώσσηι θύραι οὐκ ἐπίκεινται; at S. Phil. 188, ἀθυρόστοµος is an epithet of Echo), though
note that Aristophanes makes ‘Euripides’ use the phrase ἀθύρωτον στόµα of ‘Aeschylus’ at Ran. 838,
amid a torrent of other Euripideanisms.
67
Or. 14: τί τἄρρητ’ ἀναµετρήσεσθαί µε δεῖ; (‘Why go the length of these unspeakable things?’).
68
Or. 26-7: ὧν δ’ ἕκατι παρθένωι λέγειν | οὐ καλόν: τοῦτ’ ἀσαφὲς ἐν κοινῶι σκοπεῖν (‘Why she killed
him is no good for an unmarried girl to speak about: in public, that must be left unexplained’). Earlier,
Electra had explicitly disavowed any Schadenfreude in Tantalus’ fate (κοὐκ ὀνειδίζω τύχας, 4), and
qualified her brief account not once but twice with the tag ‘ὡς (µὲν) λέγουσι’ (5, 8).
69
So Norwood, as cited by Willink on Or. 11ff. (p. 82).
70
Having concluded her prologue speech, she continues in her conversation with Helen for a while to
walk a discursive tightrope: e.g. Or. 85 ([in speaking of Orestes’ condition:] τὰ τούτου δ’ οὐκ ὀνειδίζω
κακά ‘Don’t think I’m gloating over his misfortune!’ – note the pointed echo of her words at Or.4
[cited at n.68]); but also the blunt αἷµα γενέθλιον κατήνυσεν (‘[Orestes] spilled parental blood’, Or. 89
– contrast her earlier reluctance to name the crimes of Pelops and Clytaemestra), and the tactless τότε
λιποῦσ’ αἰσχρῶς δόµους ([to Helen]: ‘You left your home disgracefully’ – note Helen’s reaction:
ὀρθῶς ἔλεξας, οὐ φίλως δέ µοι λέγεις [‘your words to me are true but unkindly spoken’]).
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lest they wake her sleeping brother (136-50):71 apparently, they readily comply with
her requests; and the resulting, remarkable piece of dramaturgy – a Chorus entering
quietly on tiptoe72 – forms a fitting conclusion to a prologue that seems crucially preoccupied with establishing ‘reticence’ as a positive value to counterbalance the αἰσχίστη νόσος of Tantalus.
Moments of significant silence continue to play a structural role in the
articulation of the drama, as for instance Orestes’ contribution to the Argive debate is
separated from the other contributions reported by the Old Man by a significant
moment of silence (930 κοὐδεὶς ἔτ’ εἶπε); and a similar moment of silence is observed
on stage after the Old Man has concluded his recital, as Electra stands poised to
deliver the long θρῆνος in which she finally reverts to the telling of her family history,
and the Chorus comment:
Cho.
ὦ δυστάλαινα παρθέν’, ὡς ξυνηρεφὲς
πρόσωπον ἐς γῆν βαλοῦσ’ ἄφθογγος εἶ,
ὡς ἐς στεναγµοὺς καὶ γόους δραµουµένη.
(957-9)
‘O unfortunate girl, how downcast is your clouded face, how voiceless
you are as if about to break forth into wailing and lamentation!’
The textual integrity of both these passages has been called into doubt, Willink for instance athetising the full extent of Orestes’ Assembly speech,73 and the majority of
editors bracketing the lines in which the Chorus comment on Electra’s prolonged
‘voicelessness’; but the transmitted text fits admirably in the pattern we are tracing
here, with first Orestes and then Electra breaking suspenseful moments of silence before delivering what they have to say.74
Electra’s θρῆνος (960 ff.) itself clearly marks her emancipation from the
seemly πάρθενος, purportedly committed to silence and reticence, of the prologue and
parodos: from here on, she will no longer be ‘silent’. When she is done with the de71
Esp. Or. 136-7: ἡσύχωι ποδὶ | χωρεῖτε, µὴ ψοφεῖτε and 140-1: σῖγα σῖγα, λεπτὸν ἴχνος ἀρβύλας |
τίθετε, µὴ κτύπειτε κτλ.; and again at 183-4 οὐχὶ σῖγα | σῖγα φυλασσοµένα κτλ. At Or. 136ff., the constitution of the text and its distribution over Electra and the Chorus is quite uncertain: see Willink’s
successive notes on pp. 103-7. I follow Kovacs’ Loeb edition in assigning 140-1, pace the manuscripts
but with a number of ancient authorities, to Electra.
72
Willink on Or. 136-9 (p. 103) contrasts Ba. 55-61, where Dionysus enjoins the Chorus of Asian Bac-
chants to enter as noisily as possible.
73
Cf. above, n. 47.
74
The long lyrical section that begins at Or. 960 is assigned to Electra by the manuscripts, but most re-
cent editors give them to the Chorus (with Electra either remaining silent throughout [so Damen, ‘Electra’s Monody’], singing the second part [Biehl, Reeve, Diggle, Kovacs] or joining the Chorus in antiphony [Willink on Or. 960-1012 (p. 240-1)]). On the assumption that the Chorus starts the song, Or.
957-9 – lines that according to Σ were absent from some ancient witnesses – would indeed be superfluous; but if, with the MSS, we allow Electra to begin, this objection disappears.
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tails of the myths that, earlier, she conspicuously passed over, and welcomes her
brother back on stage with some choice phrases from the stock of tragic lamentation,75
Orestes’ first reaction is to impose silence on her:
οὐ σῖγ’ ἀφεῖσα τοὺς γυναικείους γόους
στέρξεις τὰ κρανθέντ’; οἰκτρὰ µὲν τάδ’, ἀλλ’ ὅµως.
(1022-3)
‘Won’t you be silent, and stop those feminine laments? Take to your
heart what has been ordained: it’s lamentable, but there it is.’
But contrary to what her attitude in the play’s prologue may have led us to expect,
Electra does not comply: ‘καὶ πῶς σιωπῶ;’, she asks (1025). The Old Man’s report of
the Argive council has stirred Electra to speak up, and now there is no stopping her,
even though – as her brother claims – it is ‘killing’ him (1027 σὺ µή µ’ ἀπόκτεινε),
‘cloaking [him] in unmanliness’ (1031 µή ... µοι περιβάληις ἀνανδρίαν), and ‘dissolving’ his powers of resistance (1047 ἔκ τοί µ’ ἔτηξας).
Then, as brother and sister stand poised for a double suicide, comes the turn of
another traditionally ‘silent’ character: Pylades.76 Earlier in the play, this man – who
in Aeschylus’ Choephori spoke just three lines, and none at all in Euripides’ own
Electra – had already engaged his friend Orestes in a very lengthy stichomythia;77
here, although he has been on stage as the third actor since 1018, he has been silent
for more than sixty lines, before entering into the conversation with a pithy ‘Stop!’
(ἐπίσχες).78 Just as, in Choephori, Pylades briefly found a voice to provide the impetus for the murder of Clytaemestra, so he here speaks up to initiate a line of action that
should result in the assassination of Helen (1098); and then, Pylades having once
more played his part, Electra steps forward again – more than a hundred lines of silence on her side having passed – to propose a second twist to the assassination
scheme: the kidnapping of Hermione. She commands maximum attention for her
speech (ἄκουε δή νυν, καὶ σὺ δεῦρο νοῦν ἔχε – 1181), and concludes it with a stereotyped tag that, as Eduard Fraenkel has observed, properly rounds off a public discourse (εἴρηται λόγος, 1203);79 and Orestes welcomes his sister’s contribution with
remarkable alacrity:
ὦ τὰς φρένας µὲν ἄρσενας κεκτηµένη,
75
See the parallels in Di Benedetto on Or. 1018ss. (p. 203-4) and Willink on Or. 1018-21 (p. 260).
76
For the new role of Pylades in Or., see esp. Burnett, Catastrophe Reversed 213-5.
77
Or. 729-806; on the irony of this cf. Dunn, Tragedy’s End 167. Pylades, a κωφὸν πρόσωπον
throughout E. El., has no part to play in S. El.; his large role in the plot of IT seems, like so much else
in this drama (cf. above, ch. II n.48), a novelty.
78
Sixty lines is, as Taplin, Stagecraft 334 observes, an abnormally long time for a third actor to say
nothing; though cf. Willink on Or. 1013-1245 (p. 259).
79
E.g. Thuc. 2.46.1 (from Pericles’ funeral oration): εἴρηται καὶ ἐµοὶ λόγωι...: cf. Fraenkel, ‘Phoenis-
sen’ 52n.1 with further parallels; Di Benedetto on Or. 1203 (p. 232); Mastronarde on Pho. 1012 (p.
430-1).
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τὸ σῶµα δ’ ἐν γυναιξὶ θηλείαις πρέπον,
ὡς ἀξία ζῆν µᾶλλον ἢ θανεῖν ἔφυς.
(1204-6)
‘You have the wits of a man, and a body that stands out among feminine women: you are made for living, not to die!’
This is, by all accounts, an outrageous compliment: not only is it extremely rare for a
male tragic character to comment on a female character’s good looks, but the φρένες
ἄρσενες with which Orestes credits his sister immediately call to mind the ‘ἀνδρόβουλον κέαρ’ (A. Ag. 11) of the matricides’ own mother – emphasising, as many
commentators have observed, the ominous parallellism between the proposed killing
of Helen, the killing of Clytaemestra herself, and Clytaemestra’s killing of Agamemnon.80 The very outrageousness of Orestes’ compliment seems designed to underscore
all the more heavily the momentous development that has taken place in Electra’s
character: after her initial seemly reticence and her elaborate ‘feminine’ lamentation,
Electra now emerges as a speaker able to participate in the plotting on an equal basis
with Orestes and Pylades.
In the preceding paragraphs, I have focused on Euripides’ ingenious patterning
of the speeches and silences that make up his drama: at key points, he has his speaking characters display a marked reticence (Electra in the prologue) and impose silence
on others (Electra in the parodos; Orestes in the 4th episode), or conversely, confound
the spectators’ expectations by bursting into speech (Electra; Pylades). As Menelaus
has occasion to observe in passing: ‘There are situations when silence is stronger than
λόγοι, and others when λόγοι are stronger than silence’.81 This patterning complements the play’s thematic insistence on the dangerousness – the δεινότης – of unchecked speech that is programmatically addressed in the opening mythological exemplum, and in the dramatic significance of the repeatedly transgressed prohibition
for the matricides to be spoken with. Moreover, the gradual progression from silence
to speech feeds into the play’s general dramatic movement, from initial stasis, towards
the escalating violence of the final scene: the more Orestes’ allies (re)gain their
voices, the more the dramatic action comes to resemble the original matricide.
All this comes together in one more remarkable passage, moments away from
Apollo’s e machina appearance. The matricides have taken control of the palace,
which they threaten to burn down; Helen is presumed to be dead; Hermione is held at
sword-point, to secure the escape of her mother’s purported killers; and Menelaus is
reduced to begging for his daughter’s life. When Orestes refuses to comply, Menelaus
turns on Pylades, now – like Electra – a silent extra, and asks: ‘What about you, Pylades: do you condone this murder?’ (1591); and Orestes answers for his voiceless
friend:
80
Cf. e.g. Greenberg, ‘Orestes’ 184-6; Conacher, Euripidean Drama 223; Zeitlin, ‘Closet of Masks’
58; Willink on Or. xxviii-iv; Holzhausen, Euripides Politikos 131-2.
81
Or. 588-9, cited in the Preface to this dissertation.
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... φησὶν σιωπῶν.
163
(1592)
‘He speaks through his silence’.
This brief exchange has been described as a parodic jibe at the three-actor convention;82 and it has been described as a bold recasting of the remarkable passage in Aeschylus’ Choephori, already referred to above, where a (supernumerary?) Pylades unexpectedly speaks up to remind Orestes of his Delphic mission:83 but apart from all
that, surely, the passage should also be read as the culmination of the speech vs silence pattern identified above. The action having progressed to this highly charged
point by means of successive eruptions of speech, it is now pushed even further by the
‘silent speech’ of a κωφὸν πρόσωπον: the final instalment in a sequence of events that
reflects and extends the original matricide is sanctioned, not by an authoritative Delphic voice, but precisely in a way that underscores the absence of Apollo,84 lamented
by Orestes himself in the early scenes (section 1 above), and sorely felt during Orestes’ trial (2). By representing this absence as a moment of silence – we may imagine,
for good effect, a loaded pause before Orestes answers in lieu of his friend – Euripides
brings the action to a dramatically as well as thematically logical conclusion, before
Apollo, unexpectedly does appear to restore cosmic and political order in Argos.85
5. Towards a conclusion: ideas about language in Euripides
What I have tried to show in the preceding sections is that in Euripides’ Orestes, ideas
about language inform the drama at various key points, and at various levels of interpretation. The negative exemplum of Tantalus – who fell from grace because of his
‘ἀκώλαστος γλῶσσα’ – extends its scope over the exploits of his descendants, as first
Orestes and then Menelaus suffers δεινὰ πάθη in consequence of their transgressions.
These sufferings are caused at least in part through their Tantalid inheritance: Orestes’
revisionist perspective on the matricide’s moral and religious implications stands him
in no good stead when he has to negotiate his impunity with the community that he
has offended; and Menelaus’ cavalier treatment of the prohibition to converse with his
nephew costs him dear. In other contexts, as we have seen, speech can be thought of
82
So e.g. Winnington-Ingram, ‘Poietes Sophos’ 130; Burnett, Revenge 248-9. Willink ad loc. (p. 344)
points to other passages in Or. where Euripides “highlights artificial conventions” of tragic drama.
83
Cf. Nisetich, ‘Silencing of Pylades’; Davies, ‘Speaking & Silence’. The status of the actor delivering
Pylades’ lines at A. Cho. 900-3 is uncertain: he could be the τριταγωνιστής who has just performed a
‘lightning change’ (so e.g. Marshall, ‘Casting’ 261-3 with references), or a fourth actor, or an off-stage
voice (cf. Pickard-Cambridge, Festivals 135-7; Taplin, Stagecraft 353-4).
84
The observation that Pylades in A. Cho. serves as a kind of stand-in for Apollo himself can be traced
back to K.O. Müller: cf. the well-documented discussion of Roberts, Apollo & his Oracle 44.
85
For Apollo’s e machina appearance as a decisive intervention in the dramatic action, cf. esp. Lefko-
witz, ‘Apollo’. Others (e.g. Zeitlin, ‘Closet of Masks’ 69; Euben, ‘Corruption’ 240-5; Dunn, Tragedy’s
End 170-4) would read the play’s ending as ironical: cf. above, ch. II n.118.
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as a ‘medicine’ that can cure the ills of society (ch. I.1 above); but the dramatic world
of Orestes programmatically frames (excessive) speech as a ‘disease’, whose proliferation must be stopped to prevent misfortune from coming about. When in the play’s
second half, self-imposed restrictions on speech are lifted – when first Electra, then
Pylades speaks out – the action inexorably moves towards a chaos that only Apollo
can put right.
We discerned a similar pattern in the two Euripidean dramas discussed in ch.
I: as initial attempts to alleviate the sufferings of Medea and Phaedra are supplanted
by ever more aggressive uses of speech, both Medea and Hippolytus reveal a movement according to which proliferating speech engenders ever more momentous consequences; a movement according to which – to quote Hippolytus’s Phaedra – the
‘noose of words’ (κάθαµµα λόγου) requires other ‘τέχναι and λόγοι’ to be undone.86
These plays display a subtle awareness of the ambivalent power of the spoken word,
which aspires to be like the φάρµακα dispensed by a doctor, but which also has the
potential to do untold damage; and they can be seen to anticipate Gorgias’ unsettling
insight, developed in his Encomium of Helen, that there can be no categorical distinction between speech as a (beneficent) ‘medicine’ and speech as (harmful) ‘magic’.
Like Medea and Hippolytus, Euripides’ Orestes makes good dramatic use of the idea
that there are things that had better remain unsaid: compare e.g. Electra’s notable reticence in the later play’s prologue with the protracted negotiations between Phaedra
and the Nurse in Hippolytus’ first episode (ch. I.2.2); or Electra’s brief outburst at the
end of the prologue (Or. 126-32) and Medea’s similar outburst once Creon’s back is
turned (Med. 364ff.) – both passages marking a repressed woman’s emancipation
from compliant silence.
But if the earlier dramas and the late Orestes display a similar awareness of
the limits of speech (and of the dangers of transgressing these limits), there are notable differences too. What seems to be absent from the earlier plays is the studied collision between mutually exclusive perspectives on the feasibility of the ἀγὼν λόγων
that we have discerned in the ‘agon’ scenes of both Phoenician Women and Orestes.
In the ἀγῶνες of Medea and Hippolytus, the contestants disagree irreconcilably on
many substantial points, and they each have scathing things to say about the other’s
discursive integrity;87 but they do not disagree over procedural questions like, ‘is
truth’s µῦθος singular?’, or ‘are τὰ καλὰ καὶ τὰ µὴ καλά manifest to all?’. Such considerations are introduced, as we have seen, in other Euripidean dramas, notably in
such plays of the mid- to late 420s as Suppliant Women and Hecabe, in which outsiders like the Theban Herald and the Trojan queen Hecabe are given a remarkably wide
scope to criticise Greek, or even Athenian deliberative practice, precisely by answering the questions listed above in the affirmative (ch. III.3-4). However, these plays
86
Hipp. 670-1, as discussed in ch. I.2.2 above.
87
E.g. Med. 525 (n.30 above) and 580-5 (partly cited at ch. III. n.136); Hipp. 928-32 (Theseus to Hip-
polytus: ‘a man should have two tongues, one to tell the truth and one to deceive’) and 1038-40 (cited
above, ch. I.2.2).
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are different from Orestes and Phoenician Women, which situate such tensions between analytical and monolithical world-views within a single community, not in the
stereotyped dialogical relationship between Greek vs barbarian or Athenian vs Theban.
Orestes and Phoenician Women depict communities that are in themselves
fundamentally divided over two contrary impulses: an excessive reliance on the
power of speech to affect reality and create social fact on the one hand, and a distrust
of the spoken word on the other. This is, again, a feature that distinguishes these plays
from the dramas of the 410s discussed in ch. II. Both Orestes and Phoenician Women
contain examples of ὄνοµα-πρᾶγµα talk: the former in Orestes’ ἀγών speech, when he
acknowledges that he is ἀνόσιος but ὅσιος ‘by another ὄνοµα’; the latter in Eteocles’
ἀγών speech, when he claims that καλόν and σοφόν resemble each other only ‘by
name’ (ὀνοµάσαι). But unlike in the earlier plays, ὄνοµα-πρᾶγµα talk in Orestes and
Phoenician Women is applied to value terms rather than proper names; nor does the
notion of ‘nominal’ status or responsibility that preoccupied the poet in Ion, IT and
Helen and that he took up again in IA, play a substantial role.88 More importantly,
whereas the plays of the mid- to later-410s show everybody happily if misguidedly
engaging in ὄνοµα-πρᾶγµα talk, in Orestes and Phoenician Women – as in the late IA
– ὄνοµα-πρᾶγµα thinking becomes a bone of contention within the drama: something
that some characters reject, and come to blows over with those who favour it.
We might conclude that while there is a strong continuity in Euripides’ interest
in ideas about language, he can be seen to put these ideas to different uses at different
stages of his career. Striking correspondence in treatment or choice of themes is confined to plays of roughly the same period, such as Medea and Hippolytus (which both
problematise the idea that speech can ‘heal’), Ion, IT and Helen (which, with various
degrees of emphasis, subject their human characters’ use of ὄνοµα-πρᾶγµα talk to
more or less complex forms of dramatic irony), or Suppliant Women and Hecuba
(which challenge, explicitly or by implication, Athens’ reliance on a Periclean/Protagorean model of decision-making). Within these convenient pairings, further differentiations can certainly be made; but rather than proceed with cataloguing correspondences and differences between the Euripidean plays that I have been discussing so
far, I would conclude this chapter on the poet’s Orestes with an attempt to come a little closer to understanding the distinctive quality of this drama and the one it most resembles, Phoenician Women, by examining the historical circumstances in which they
were produced.
88
When at Or. 390, Orestes claims that ‘his σῶµα is wasted, but his ὄνοµα remains’, his words resem-
ble those of his counterpart in IT, who enjoins his sister to ‘sacrifice his σῶµα, not his ὄνοµα’ (504);
but in the later play, the ὄνοµα-σῶµα contrast is merely one in a series of sophisticated antitheses: see
my discussion in ch. II.1.2 (p. 55).
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6. Epilogue: Phoenician Women and Orestes – plays for their age?
As we saw above, Orestes and Phoenician Women depict communities that are fundamentally divided over contrary impulses: reliance on, and distrust of the power of
speech. To be sure, that is by no means all there is to be said about these plays: Phoenician Women is also a hugely enjoyable phantasmagoria that reunites familiar characters from other tragic dramas – Oedipus, Creon and Antigone, as well as Polynices,
Eteocles and Iocasta – and delights with such set-pieces as Antigone’s τειχοσκοπία
and the sacrifice of Menoeceus;89 and in the preceding sections, we have seen something of the mythographical inventiveness that characterises Orestes as well.90 Still,
when we keep our focus on these dramas’ treatment of ideas about language, and accordingly confine ourselves to the ‘agon’ scenes and their embedding in the larger
dramatic structure, it is their depiction of internally divided communities that leaps to
the fore – especially if we compare these depictions with the relatively harmonious
political communities of other tragic dramas, where threats and challenges come from
the outside; and we may well ask, how come? Why do Phoenician Women and Orestes dramatise deliberative processes in a different way from that of Children of Heracles, Suppliant Women or Hecuba? And whence the general hostility towards the spoken word that pervades the action of one of the last play that Euripides produced before his death?
Despite a venerable tradition that has its roots in ancient scholarship, it remains as hazardous as ever to try and read tragedy in the light of contemporary political history:91 and this is not only a matter of our patchy and partial knowledge of the
history, but also of our necessarily imperfect understanding of what tragedy purports
to do. Thus, even if we can plausibly map certain events in a tragic drama onto events
in the recent historical experience of its audience, the explanatory value of this
achievement will be limited: in the absence of statements of purpose on the author’s
part, and of records of the audience’s appreciation of what they have seen, what more
can we do than establish that, say, Suppliant Women may have reminded the spectators of the retreat at Delium in 425; or that Trojan Women was possibly inspired by
Athens’ brutal treatment of Melos in the winter of 416/5, as many scholars have assumed?92 In this respect, it may be thought of little avail to labour the obvious – that,
while a play like Children of Heracles was produced in the earliest years of the Pelo-
89
The entertainment value of Pho. is discussed by Sluiter, ‘SOAP’ 25-32; for Euripides’ remarkable
manipulation of the audience’s expectations, see also Saïd, ‘Attente déçue’.
90
This aspect of the play is particularly emphasised by Willink on Or. p. xxii-xxviii.
91
For a critical survey of this tradition, see e.g. Saïd, ‘Tragedy & Politics’.
92
Suppl. and Delium: see above, ch. III n.71. Tro. and Melos: Van Erp Taalman Kip, ‘Euripides &
Melos’ observes that the poet would hardly have had the time to turn these events into an interconnected trilogy produced in the spring of 415 (cf. Hose, Drama u. Gesellschaft 35-6; Kuch, ‘Melos’);
but it remains quite likely that the composition of Euripides’ Trojan plays was inspired by the charged
political atmosphere that gave rise to the Melian expedition earlier in the year: see esp. Sidwell,
‘Melos’.
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ponnesian War, when Pericles was still alive, Phoenician Women and Orestes were
created after one of the most traumatic events in later-5th-cent. socio-political life: the
coup d’état of the Four Hundred. On the other hand, the obvious should perhaps not
be wholly ignored either; and a brief account of the years in which the Athenian public saw its last Euripidean productions may yet help to deepen our understanding of
their distinctive depiction of deliberative process.93
By 413, the Sicilian expedition, publicly ratified in a spirit of elated optimism
brought on by such military successes as the subjugation of Melos,94 had ended in
disaster; and the war effort went steeply down-hill, leading up to the coup of 412/11,
when the Athenian general Pisander, leader of the Samos-based faction that was seeking Persian support, bludgeoned the Athenian Assembly into approving an essentially
oligarchic reform, and secured the backing of the city’s ἑταιρεῖαι.95 Some months
later, with Pisander on his way to implement this programme, the oligarchic revolution had already become a fact, with the covert assassination of several prominent
democrats and the abolition of pay for public office.96 During this time, the βουλή and
ἐκκλησία continued to meet, but deliberation was effectively controlled by the revolutionaries;97 and once Pisander arrived in Athens, the βουλή was replaced by a group
of Four Hundred, and the Assembly restricted to a roster of Five Thousand men.98 After a reign of four months, the Four Hundred were deposed, but the Five Thousand retained their exclusive power over the Assembly;99 and full democracy was not restored before the summer of 410.
Aristophanes’ comedies of 411 make no discernible reference to what was going on that very spring (though they show a marked decrease in the number of indi-
93
My summary of the events is selective: for full surveys, see e.g. Kagan, Fall 131-57; Munn, School
of History 127-51; Olson & Austin on Ar. Thesmo. pp. xxvi-xliv; Mann, Demagogen u.d. Volk 270-82,
the latter with comprehensive references to scholarly treatments.
94
Optimism: cf. Thuc. 6.24.3; on the relationship between the Melos affair (as reshaped by Thucy-
dides) and the Sicilian expedition, see e.g. Kallet, Corrosion of Power 9-20; Greenwood, ‘Fictions of
Dialogue’.
95
Thuc. 8.53-54.3, dating Pisander’s actions to the winter of 412/11.
96
Thuc. 8.65.2-66.1. Although Thucydides is not quite clear about the precise chronology, the assassi-
nations are likely to have commenced soon after Pisander’s first visit to Athens: cf. Hornblower on
Thuc. 8.53-55 (p. 3.911).
97
Thuc. 8.66.1-2; in the subsequent paragraphs, Thucydides describes the paralysing atmosphere of ter-
ror that prevailed among Athens’ population.
98
Thuc. 8.67.3; [Arist.] Ath. pol. 32.2 adds that the 5000 were chosen λόγωι µόνον, Athens in fact be-
ing ruled by the 400. Eventually, the βουλή was forcibly expelled by the 400, who were armed with
knives and accompanied by a gang of 120 toughs (Thuc. 8.69-70.1).
99
Thuc. 8.97-98.1; Thucydides describes the ensuing situation as a ‘mixture between oligarchy and
democracy’ (µετρία γὰρ ἥ τε τοὺς ὀλίγους καὶ τοὺς πόλλους ξύνκρασις ἐγένετο, 8.97.2), and regarded
this as a satisfactory arrangement (ibid., καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα δὴ τὸν πρῶτον χρόνον ἐπί γε ἐµοῦ Ἀθηναῖοι
φαίνονται εὖ πολιτεύσαντες).
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viduals satirised by name: this was a time to keep a low profile);100 but Euripides’
Phoenician Women, probably produced in 410, is a different matter.101 By the time of
the 411 Dionysia, Pisander had pushed oligarchic reforms in the Assembly and done
the rounds of Athens’ clubs, and the reign of terror described by Thucydides was in
full progress; in the following year, the exclusive government of the Four Hundred
had been replaced, but democracy had yet to be restored. In either of these years, the
poet’s choice to dramatise a conflict between two brothers – Polynices, who marches
with a foreign army upon his own city, and Eteocles, who refuses to be bound by an
equable agreement – would have been suggestive, to say the least; although, as observed above, this suggestiveness might be counteracted to some extent by the play’s
sheer entertainment value.102 As for Orestes: shortly after the 410 Dionysia, Athens
had slowly begun to regain its maritime supremacy with Alcibiades’ victory at
Cyzicus, and to recover sufficiently to reject Spartan peace-offers; but internally, the
city remained divided, one faction of the now dispersed Four Hundred turning on their
former associates, and the murderous activities of the ἑταιρεῖαι that originally supported Pisander continuing unabated. Again, Euripides’ choice of subject – a community failing to find a satisfactory way of dealing with an archetypical crime, and descending into increasing violence – appears to be suggestive;103 although as in the
case of Phoenician Women, the exuberance of the dramaturgy may be seen to take
away the sharpest edges.104
More so, however, than Euripides’ more or less apt choice of mythical subject-matter, it is the dissolution of the deliberative processes highlighted in Orestes
and Phoenician Women that makes these plays seem written with recent developments prominently in the author’s mind. In Thucydides’ account of the events narrated above, the revolutionaries’ abuse of Athens’ forums for public deliberation stand
out as a constant feature: popular resistance to Pisander’s proposals in the Assembly
was apparently quenched ‘by false hope and fear’ (Thuc. 8.53.3-54.1), and the As-
100
Fourteen κωµωδούµενοι in Ar. Lys., seventeen in Thesmo. – versus e.g. eighty-one in Vesp. (422),
sixty-one in Av. (414), fifty-five again in Ran. (405). For the impact of the oligarchic coup on the composition of Lys. and Thesmo. see esp. Leszek, ‘Aristophanes, Thucydides VIII’ and Olson & Austin on
Thesmo. p. xliv.
101
Reviewing the stylistic and metrical data as well as the testimony of Σ Ar. Ran. 53 (which puts Pho.
between Hel. and Or.), Mastronarde establishes a date-range between 411 and 409; but of these dates,
410 is the most likely, since poets appear mostly to have competed in the Dionysia every other year:
see Hose, Drama u. Geselschaft 14-18 and 190-97 on “Müller’s Law”.
102
Romilly, ‘Actualité des Phéniciennes’ 35-41 is the most even-handed treatment of possibly topical
references in the play; also e.g. Newiger, Phönizierinnen; Neumann, Gegenwart 57-76; Meltzer, Poetics of Nostalgia 23-31.
103
Different topical features of this play’s mythopoiesis have been identified by e.g. Burkert, ‘Absur-
dität der Gewalt’ passim; Rawson, ‘Aspects’ 155-6; and Euben, ‘Corruption’ 236-7. Cf. n.49 above.
104
In this context, we may note that the light-hearted satyr play Cyclops was probably part of the same
production as Or.: for the juxtaposition of these two plays, see esp. Marshall, ‘Dating the Cyclops’.
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sembly was effectively dominated by revolutionaries (66.2-3; cf. n.98 above); laws
controlling excessive proposals – a key feature of democratic procedure – were suspended (67.2); and to cap it all, the Assembly eventually ratified its own dissolution
unanimously (69.1).105 For Euripides to present an audience that has recently experienced such upheavals with a depiction of the ἀγὼν λόγων that is as unproblematical as
that of Children of Heracles, or even as guardedly optimistical as those of Suppliant
Women or Hecabe, would hardly have been opportune. We may never know whether
the poet intended (or the spectators viewed) Phoenician Women and Orestes as cautionary tales, or as a topical parody of recent Athenian goings-on, but we may surmise
that after the unprecedented, one-year-long suspension of Athens’ democratic institutions, a ‘successful’ dramatic ἀγὼν λόγων on a politically salient subject would have
been seen by the audience as jarringly incredible. What evidently still passed muster
in the late 430s or the mid-420s , when popular confidence in the soundness of Athens’ political institutions was by all accounts relatively unaffected, may not have done
so any more in the century’s final decade.
Moreover, a second consideration may here be taken into account. Our most
eloquent testimony to the changes in Athenian political culture during the last part of
the 5th cent. is the biased, but internally consistent narrative of Thucydides, whose
account of what happened in 412/411 can be seen as the culmination of a trend –
signposted by the historian himself at 2.65.11-13 – according to which the death of
Pericles initiated a progressive decline in the city’s deliberative culture.106 As we have
seen, the first post-Periclean instance of public deleberation reported in detail is the
Mitylenaean debate, in which the historian juxtaposes Cleon’s anti-agonistic rally
with Diodotus’ less-than-wholehearted defence of the ἀγὼν λόγων (ch. III.2); then
come such meta-rhetorical set-pieces as the Corcyrean debate, the Melian dialogue
and the debate about the Sicilian expedition, starring the wayward Alcibiades.
This series of complementary vignettes of Athens’ declining deliberative standards, which culminates in the 411 coup, can be mapped to some extent, not just onto
Aristophanic comedy of 425-414 and its insistent critique of war-time rhetoric, but
also onto Euripidean tragedy. In ch. III and IV above, I have demonstrated that a
number of Euripides’ characters adopt a perspective on the ἀγὼν λόγων that closely
resembles that of Thucydides’ Cleon. These characters first appear in plays produced
in the years round about the historical Cleon’s heroic death in 422: for instance, Sup-
105
The historian himself was in exile from Athens during the years of the oligarchic coup, but his facts
are mostly confirmed by [Arist.] Ath. pol. 29-33; if anything, ps.-Arist. can be seen to downplay the intrigue reported by Thucydides’ account (which he knows), to concentrate on the official documents
supplied by his other main source, the pro-oligarchic Androtion. On the political prejudices that colour
both accounts, cf. Westlake, ‘Subjectivity’ 183-6; and for a full comparison see Heftner, Oligarchische
Umsturz.
106
Cf. the literature cited above, ch. III n. 66. Hornblower on Thuc. p. 3.1053-4 observes that, whereas
it seems unlikely that Thucydides, had he lived, would not have continued his history beyond 411, the
final chapters of Book 8 show signs of closure on various levels of the text.
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pliant Women’s Theban Herald, who claims that ‘even if there are two λόγοι’ to
choose from, ‘everyone knows which is good and which is bad’; and Hecuba’s Hecabe, who categorically denies that a crime can be successfully defended. In giving
voice to this anti-agonistic perspective in his tragedies, Euripides may be seen to acknowledge an emergent disenchantment with the dominant political ideology – even
if, as I have argued, these plays still evince an essentially positive appraisal of the
ἀγὼν λόγων as a political institution. A drama like Trojan Women of 415, by contrast,
has often been seen by modern scholars to present Athenian politics in an ironically
harsh light – and, in so doing, to align itself with Thucydides’ programmatic condemnation of Athens’ treatment of the unfortunate Melians:107 here, on the eve of the Sicilian expedition, tragedy may be seen to sound a warning note. Finally, just as the
411 coup crowns Thucydides’ prolonged narrative of dissolution, so Euripides’ Phoenician Women and Orestes depict societies in which the ἀγὼν λόγων is a mere distraction in a larger pattern of exploding violence.
So, when we try to place Euripides’ post-411 plays in their historical situation,
two external correlates come into view: the historical events of 412/411, which may
well have made the poet wary of presenting his audience with a naively optimistic
perspective upon the feasibility of the ἀγὼν λόγων; and a narrative trajectory, traced
with the benefit of hindsight by a historian writing in the final years of the century,
that can also be discerned when we look at the tragedian’s output from the late 430s to
the years 410-408. And while arguably, none of this explains anything much about
Phoenician Women and Orestes as works of art – for aren’t we still left wondering
whether these dramas were intended by the poet as cautionary tales, or as topical
parodies, or as sheer entertainment after all? – it does give a historical dimension to
the interpretations of their dramatic action advanced above. What is distinctive in
these plays appears to have been conditioned both by the poet’s abiding critical interest in the mechanisms of Athenian-style political deliberation, and by the variable historical circumstances in which his plays were produced.
107
Tro. and Melos: cf. n.92 above. Condemnation: note e.g. the revealing phrasing at Thuc. 5.84.3:
πρὶν ἀδικεῖν τι τῆς γῆς λόγους πρῶτους ποιησοµένους ἔπεµψαν πρέσβεις (‘Before committing any crime against the land, they sent heralds to make speeches’), and the fact that the historian does not allow
the Athenians an answer to the Melians’ description of themselves as ὅσιοι πρὸς οὐ δικαίους (5.104:
‘justified against criminals’) – though the balance of Thucydides’ sympathies in the Melian dialogue
remains a matter of debate: see Hornblower on Thuc. 5.84-118 (p. 3.218) with references. For the programmatic nature of the Dialogue, see also Andrewes on Thuc. 5.113 (4.183-4); and the literature cited
above, n.94. In the 4th cent., the Melian question became a locus for discussing the rights and wrongs
of Athenian imperialism per se: cf. e.g. Xen. Hel. 2.2.3; Isoc. 4.100 and 12.63 and 89; and see Romilly,
Imperialism 282-6.
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